


The Devil Walking Next To Me

by Lafeae



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Mob, Cat and Mouse, Drama & Romance, M/M, Organized Crime, Thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-02-24
Packaged: 2021-03-18 19:13:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28997304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafeae/pseuds/Lafeae
Summary: The streets are hard to walk. For Joey Wheeler, a detective with the Domino City Police Department, its even harder. A stroke of luck has put him within arms reach of the elusive mob boss Seto Kaiba. The problem? He may get deeper into the gang, and into Kaiba, than he intends.Where will his allegiances lie?--Puppyshipping/violetshipping, Mob AU
Relationships: Jounouchi Katsuya | Joey Wheeler/Kaiba Seto
Comments: 28
Kudos: 45





	1. The Bars Are Temples

**Author's Note:**

> I have no shame, got a sudden idea. Here you go. 
> 
> I also haven’t wrote in a while, do go easy on me.

The Domino Club had been around for fifty or sixty years. The signboard outside had 1967 etched in old iron. It was weird, Joey thought, because the place hadn’t staggered out of 1987, or wherever it got the dizzying pattern on its floor. It’s walls. It’s lights. 

Club was a pushing it, too. 

Short of the pulsing baseline, it wasn’t a club. A social club, yeah buddy. With lights so low he couldn’t see an arm’s length ahead of him, unless it was in the multi-coloured lights. 

He blinked and was pretty sure he’d moved two feet to the left. Maybe. That could have been the booze. He’d had two or three drinks since he’d been gotten to the club, but he’d only danced once, and that was a terrible average. At least three dances per drink, minimum. That wasn’t even his rule, it had been Tristan’s, but that bastard partner of his had abandoned him hours ago. He’d caught a glimpse of his buddy somewhere in the corner, wandering out of the bathroom with a blond on his arm. 

This place was easy for Tristan; the girlies were everywhere. The guys, too, but they weren’t looking for other guys. Only girls. 

Joey fell onto one of the couches near the stairs. He’d hung around there most of the night, getting up only for drinks. The people that walked down from upstairs were the crème de la crème. The people who ran the government, made movies, played sports and knew people who did those things. Plenty of girls in bodycon dresses and six-inch stilettos went up there. They hung off the arms of guys who he was pretty sure hadn’t come through the front door. He’d have seen them, because Tristan had abandoned him and he didn’t have anything better to do than people watch between the lights. 

The decent guys had chiselled jaws and good hair. Slicked back hair? No, those were douchebags and weren’t his type. They wore gold chains and wristwatches they’d bought off of “their guy” on the corner. Joey didn’t even know shoes all that well, but he knew when there was an extra stripe on their Adidas. No, it wasn’t those guys, who buttoned down their shirts so people could see their pencilled in chest hair and the sweat from...whatever people wanted to think they were doing. Getting busy. They threw their coats over their shoulders like they were something, flashed fluorescent smiles, winked and waved. Some of them looked at him and the corners of their eyes glinted, and he knew what they knew, that he was checking them out, Adidas to slicked back hair. Then he stuck his tongue out and turned looked elsewhere. 

Assholes. 

Those were the kind of douchebags that were not only douchebags, but organised douchebags. Part of the Max Gang. He could sniff them out a mile away and...

Joey looked down to his empty tumbler. 

...oh. 

Right. 

He was at work. Kind of. He and Tristan were supposed to be staking this place out. Something was supposed to go down between the Max and the Dragons. Whoever those assholes were. 

As far as Joey or anyone was concerned, the Dragons were more like boogeymen. They were insular. Didn’t cause the kind of trouble that the Max did. They didn’t leave bodies behind. If they burned down a building, neither the fire department or the police cared. They didn’t seem to terrorise civilians, but they were always being talked about like a collective nightmare the people shrugged off in the daylight. Their leader, a guy named Seto Kaiba, liked it that way. 

Whatever Joey was supposed to be doing here, he’d half forgotten it. Find out what those two were up to. Tristan was hitting up the girlies, but what was he supposed to do? 

Sighing, he poised himself towards the stairs. It had a single bouncer at it who would unclip the velvet rope and let people up. 

A gaggle of them were coming by. All Max. Gross. But he got up and swaggered over to them, making sure he didn’t trip on his way, and sidled up beside the fifth guy trailing in the back. 

“Lookin’ mighty lonely there,” Joey said. 

“Back off, toehead.” 

“Aw, c’mon.” 

The guy wasn’t that bad. His shirt wasn’t unbuttoned, that was a plus. Joey winked at him, gave him the little eye glint and the smile. 

“Hey, I’m just callin’ it like I see it, bud. You looked lonely,” he said. The group was heading straight to the stairs, but Fifth Wheel stayed behind. Perfect. “Happens that I’m lonely, too. Was thinkin’ me an’ you could grab a coupla drinks. I’ll even buy my own, I ain’t that kinda guy. Nothin’s gotta be well...nothin’. Just us two, y’know? Tomorrow’s a new day, or whatever they say.” 

He didn’t know if this schmuck was ignorant or desperate. Joey’d been told he wasn’t charismatic, but Fifth Wheel was checking Joey out, so he cocked his hips a little forward. 

“Don’t stick out, toehead. Play it cool,” Fifth Wheel said, and he reached over, unbuttoning the top button on Joey’s dress shirt. 

He refrained from rolling his eyes. 

They went upstairs, and he practically beamed at the bouncer. This was easy, and ditching this guy once he got some intel shouldn’t have been too hard. 

The upstairs was suspended over the ground floor, leaving enough space that you could look down at the other patrons and sneer at them. It also made the space compact, where you swam in between, and sometimes over, the bodies of people idly dancing to the beat. 

The Fifth Wheel lead him to a back corner, up against a plexiglass wall that disappeared in the flashing lights. It made it really seem like you were floating, and Joey was a little impressed. He fell down on the couch by Fifth Wheel and gaped. 

“I said don’t stick out,” Fifth Wheel hissed. 

His hand landed on Joey’s thigh and squeezed. Tender? Not so much. But he played it cool and cased the area. Lots of Max. A city councilman talking shop to a Max. Domino City’s pro league pitcher, a guy named Martinez, was in the corner getting a lap-dance. 

It felt like it should have been more sex charged; it was, but there was a palpable tension. Guys in silk suits and baggy hoodies loitered around, a mix that didn’t sit well with him. Fuck, his head was spinning. The music, the lights, Fifth Wheel’s cologne. He almost hauled ass back down the stairs, he wasn’t ready for this. And then someone called out to Fifth Wheel. He whispered he’d be back, but Joey wasn’t concerned once he disappeared. 

There was more to scope out. He got up and slithered around the second floor, trying to remember people and names. He fumbled with his phone, trying to take pictures as discretely as possible. 

And then he made it to the back. He didn’t know how. The people pushed him back there.

The back wall of the floor was the only part attached to the wall. The illusion of floating broke back there, but unless you were really drunk, it probably didn’t matter. People mostly sat down and were too busy with their partner or partners to pay attention to him. 

His feet took him all the way to the door in the back. It was boring, wall-coloured. Instinct said it wasn’t anything. The waiters likely used it to get upstairs and serve drinks.

He went in anyways. The hall was bland, bright. There were stairs to one side, but to the other, where the hallway bent at the corner, he heard voices. Terse voices. 

Pulling out his phone, he set it up to record audio and stuck it in his pocket. The closer he crept, the clearer the voices became. There were two doors on the right side of the hallway, both closed. The voices carried, and he went past the first door, sticking his ear to it to make sure he was right. 

“...downtown isn’t viable anymore...” 

“Yeah, not at all. We have to restructure. You know how it is...” 

“...beneficial for all parties, divvying it up...” 

And a bout of silence. Joey was practically on top of the door, listening through the crack. If someone spoke, it was so low that he couldn’t make it out any better than a fly buzzing. He closed his eyes, convinced he’d heard a word or two from a gravelly voice. 

The door opened. 

Joey’s eyes widened immediately but didn’t adjust fast enough. Someone grabbed fistfuls of his collar and hauled him into the room. He had a face full of tablecloth before he knew it, bent at the waist and more vulnerable than he’d been with Fifth Wheel. 

A body hovered behind him. Something square jammed into the back of his head, and he heard a hammer click back. “Who the fuck are you? Go on, tell us before I blow your fucking brains out! C’mon! Who are you you sonuva—“ 

“Useless.” 

One word. Two syllables. Joey’s blood chilled, and he roved his eyes around as far he could to get a glimpse of the mouth the word came from. 

On the other side of the table, a lithe man sat. He wasn’t so much a man as he was a set of angles. His shoulders jutted one direction, and his head ticked the other. Chestnut hair curled at his brow and around his ears. It wasn’t slicked back. Oh no. This man wasn’t a Max. His pressed shirt and the long coat over his shoulders said he was much more than that. And the blue eyes....

Fuck. 

Seto Kaiba himself. 

“Useless?” the man holding Joey said. “I’ll show you useless! Tell us who the fuck sent you....!” 

“I...I just was lookin’ for the bathroom!” Joey blurted out. It was taking every ounce of strength not to wet himself, then and there. It may have been necessary. “I didn’t...I thought someone was’n here is all...I...” 

A small, noncommittal noise came from Kaiba. Not a tongue click or groan. It wasn’t upset, but Joey couldn’t place it. And that worried him more than anything. 

“Just looking for the bathroom,” Kaiba repeated. 

“I don’t believe him.” 

“And why’s that?” 

“Because he went stickin’ his nose back here. Fuckin’...spy...” 

Kaiba waved his hand dismissively and locked eyes with Joey. He scowled hard, like a man who didn’t know how to smile, yet in the moment he was the least serious man in the room. The rest were ready to turn Joey into Swiss cheese, but Seto Kaiba had a levity about him. Fuck, even in that scowl he seemed downright pleased. 

“Let him go,” Kaiba ordered. 

“What! No, he—,” 

“Let. Him. Go.” 

The gun moved away from his head. The fist unfurled from his collar. Joey collected his breath and sobered up quickly, wondering if he should stand up or keep bowing. As a general rule, he didn’t bow to criminals, even if they were the leader of the underworld. But Kaiba, and his giddiness, gave Joey a solid opportunity. If he could get Kaiba talking and find out something, anything, he could skitter out like the lost drunk they thought he was and give over all the audio evidence to his captain. Yeah. That’s what he’d do. 

He stood up and lifted his head. Their eyes met, and a charge went between them. 

From the new position, the room was less imposing. It was small. Six people already crowded it, and he’d made it even tighter. Three Max, three Dragons. Despite their conversation, there wasn’t any sort of map between them for ‘divvying up’. It was a bunch of playing cards and loose change that had been thrown around when he was thrown around. In fact, Kaiba still had cards in his hand. 

“In case you think that I’m letting you go, you’re wrong,” Kaiba began. “You just happen to be more interesting than these idiots at the moment. Sit down.” 

Joey sat. He gripped the sides of the chair tight. “What’s goin’ on here?” 

“Nothing of note.” 

“Sure seems like it.” 

“Its not.” 

Kaiba gathered up the cards and shuffled them twice. He didn’t do anything flamboyant to them. No fancy tricks, even though his long fingers were the kind that could. After, he doled them out a five-card hand and laid the rest of the deck in between them. 

“Discard as many as you want to make the best hand,” Kaiba explained. 

“What?” 

“Your cards,” Kaiba said. “Or is that too complicated for you?” 

“Not really. I just don’t get why I’m doing this.” 

“It seems pretty obvious.”

“Well, yeah. To you maybe. You’re the one doin’ it,” Joey said. He picked up the cards and looked them over. A pair of eights. Nothing of note. Ha. Same as Kaiba said, it didn’t look like anything. Maybe it wasn’t anything, maybe he’d walked into the Max and the Dragon’s card night.

He threw out three of the cards and drew three more. He didn’t look at them. He was honestly too busy looking into Kaiba’s eyes. They were like endless, sapphire pools that Joey was ready to drown in. Kaiba had given him more than a glint or a look, but Joey doubted that Seto Kaiba was even giving him a look. He wasn’t that sort of guy. His stunning cheekbones and thin nose and smooth lips aside, Kaiba wasn’t anyone’s kind of guy. He was for himself only. He carried himself so well that he wasn’t going to be approached by shitty, undercover detectives trying to get a few free drinks and one-night stand.   
  
Joey shook his head. 

“Is something wrong?” Kaiba asked. He discarded two cards. Drew two more. 

“Lost, I guess.” 

“Tch.” 

“I mean, more than tryin’ to find the bathroom.” 

“You weren’t trying to find the bathroom,” Kaiba said. 

“I was, really.” 

“Please.” 

“I’m not a spy or...or whatever you’re thinkin’. Really. I don’t even know who ya are man, I jus’—,” 

Kaiba slammed down his cards dramatically. He spread them across, one by one. Two kings, two queens. “Show you hand.” 

“I—what?” 

“Show your hand.” 

Joey clutched his cards. This was a game of life or death. Kaiba hadn’t said it, but he wasn’t that stupid. He had stumbled upon something huge, and Kaiba was toying with him in lieu of killing him immediately. For fun. For power. For fear. It probably didn’t matter what he had in his hand, Kaiba was going to make him disappear. 

So he threw down the cards, closed his eyes, and held his breath. 

One second. Two seconds. 

Nothing. 

He opened his eyes again and looked down at his cards. Three eights. If he remembered poker right, three-of-a-kind beat two pair. Right? 

“I...um...I think I won.” 

Kaiba was motionless. The room had gone so quiet you could hear the conversations floating in from downstairs. Joey tried to gauge how Kaiba was reacting underneath the scowling exterior. He was still pleased, but there was a change. He was looking down his nose at Joey. In fact, from that angle he wasn’t scowling, per se. 

“Dumb luck wins occasionally,” said Kaiba blandly. “Not that it takes skill to draw cards.” 

“Hey, I thought I did pretty damn good there. So, can I use the bathroom?” 

“You don’t need to use the bathroom.” 

“You tell that to my bladder. This dude scared the piss outta me,” Joey said, throwing a thumb over his shoulder. “So are ya gonna let me go?” 

“Should I?” 

“I’d say yeah. You got all this company, an’ I’m sorta crashin’ your party,” Joey said. He stood, and someone loomed behind him. “Though I gotta say, the real party’s downstairs. You should come join me. Be a lot more fun than these guys.” 

Kaiba rolled his eyes. “Pass.” 

“Hey, I tried.” 

Joey played nonchalant despite his bowels quaking. He went to the door, but was stopped short by a, “We’re not finished yet,” from Kaiba. 

He swallowed. “What’s up?” 

“Your name.” 

“Me?” 

Kaiba raised a brow. Best not to piss off the mob boss, or whatever Seto Kaiba considered himself. 

“I’m Joey. Some people call me Joe, if ya want. If we go out for drinks or whatever,” he said. His hand was on the door. He was almost out.

“Joey what?” Kaiba pressed. 

And every bit of Joey screamed at himself not to fuck up. Don’t tell him Wheeler. Don’t tell him Wheeler. Don’t tell the fuckin’ mob boss your name Detective Wheeler. 

“Wheelman.” 

Yeah, that sounded good. He’d had better cover names, but that was good in a pinch and three drinks in. 

“Mm. Sounds boring. Made-up almost.” 

Joey shrugged. “What can I say? I’m pretty damn borin’,” he said, and he pressed his luck asking: “You?” 

“Kaiba. Seto Kaiba. But you know that.” 

Joey dug in his brain for something. Some reasoning, some way to get him out of this as safe of possible. So far he’d gotten Kaiba’s name on tape. That wasn’t anything. He needed more. He’d gotten this far, and his captain had sent him after the Dragons. What would they give him if he could hand them over on a silver platter? 

“Ya got me,” Joey said, exasperated. His heart raced and his cheeks got hot. “I...I guess I’ve had a bit of a crush on this whole thing. This. The...well, I used to watch a lot of movies as a kid. Lot of mob movies, gang stuff. I know this isn’t really that, it’s a lot classier. Looks like it. Anyways, I always wanted to get close so I...yeah, I made up the bathroom story. I didn’t mean it that way, I jus’ didn’t think if I came in here like some band groupie that you’d see me. Honestly,” Joey said, looking Kaiba deep into his endless eyes. “I wanted t’ hear your voice. I got that, so...”

“Is that right?” 

“Yeah. It’s pretty embarrasin’.”

“I can imagine.” 

Joey cleared his throat. “Anyways. Me. You. Downstairs? I’ll be waitin’.” 

Once Joey got out the door, he ran out of the corridor, across the second-floor platform and all its formless people, all the way down and out the building. Cold, December air hit him like a brick to the face. He promptly threw up, and even once the nausea passed and he stopped shaking, he still could feel Kaiba’s eyes on the back of his head. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is heavily influences by Bokkei, but is less yakuza and more like a generic mob boss setting, with the same idea, except this will have the lead up to the sort of scene going on in Bokkei, and then the aftermath. 
> 
> So the twist in that short is a little more known here, but now there’s the tension of does Kaiba know, how long does he know, and how will these two play each other. 
> 
> Anyways, tell me what you think.


	2. But the Pearls Ain’t Free

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chugging right along!

“You partied out, Joe?” Tristan asked on their way out the door. 

Joey popped back in the club long enough to catch his partner’s attention. They could have stayed the rest of the night, sat in on conversations and clues, but there was nothing more damning than the phone that weighed in his coat pocket. 

“You could put it like that.” He stopped a few feet from the door, in the spot on the sidewalk where his stomach contents were drying and changing colours. “Think I got somethin’.”

“Is that right?” 

“Yeah.” 

Suspiciously, he eyed the gentle flow of people that went in and out of the club. His nerves were firing on all cylinders, and his attention bounced from one slick-haired dude to some of the more underwhelming patrons. There were plenty of places in Domino to go if you wanted to party, but the Domino Club catered to the clientele that enjoyed a more private experience. Even when it had been founded, his captain said, it was a hotbed of activity for the gangs that ran around town. It had been shot up twice, though neither had happened in the last decade. Management change, Joey joked, but his captain remained stony and unimpressed. 

“C’mon, let’s go get some coffee,” he suggested, already dragging Tristan around the corner and to their car. 

Tristan slid into the driver’s side. “You wanna tell me what’s bothering you so bad?” 

“Drive first.” 

“Joe...” 

“Jus’ drive, man.” 

They peeled down the street and went across town. There were plenty of diners and convenience stores to get a cup of coffee in, but they’d made a habit of going to Duke’s, an old diner near Rintama High School. Not the best part of town; depending on who you asked, it was just on the outskirts of the projects. So much so that they’d busted up a couple of fights at the diner, which meant that coffee was on the house more often than not. That, and they didn’t end up going to the same diner as the other beat cops and officers. Made it easy to get away from work. At least, most of the time. 

Joey caught a quick nap on the way. 

A heavy shoulder shake woke him. “You’re drooling on the window.” 

“Sorry. All that mess zapped the energy right outta me,” said Joey. He yawned. “Ya know how ya feel after you get spooked in a movie?” 

“That’s you.” 

“Yeah, but you know what I mean? That adrenaline rush? I got that goin’ on.” 

“You mean like after chasing a prep on foot?” 

Joey shook his head. Okay, yeah, it was sort of like that, but that was a different kind of tired. A congratulatory tired. “Nah, like, you’ve been freaked out an’ then ya float back to Earth an’ all you wanna do is crawl into bed. That feelin’. I got that goin’ on. I’ll prolly catch a couple of Z’s back at the precinct. You should too, if you’ve been drinkin’.” 

“The coffee will cover that up. Besides, we went to a bar, they expect us to smell like booze.” 

Tristan got out, and Joey followed him inside. 

Duke’s diner was eyestabblingly bright. Joey blinked a few times just on the way in, and he hurried over to their corner booth next to the jukebox. The laminated menu stuck to his forearms as soon as he touched it. He was convinced every inch of the place was covered in grease, pancake syrup, or both, but that was part of the charm, just like the cracked pleather booths and the stained, emerald green carpet. At lest someone had run over it with the vacuum recently. 

“So what’s this somethin’?” Tristan asked. 

The waitress approached with a coffee pot and left it on the table with two mugs. Once she left, Joey pulled out his phone and found the file before turning it to Tristan. While Tristan listened, he nursed an entire cup of coffee. The moment went on longer than Joey thought. It had all happened so fast; he was just happy he didn’t shit himself. 

Once done, Tristan stared at Joey. Hard. “So,” he began, clearing his throat. “You just...accidentally found Seto Kaiba.” 

“I think so.” 

“And you really believe it him?” 

“He said he was.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“No, but he was smug asshole,” Joey replied. “Even if he was a body-double or a...a whatchacallit—,” 

“Stand-in?” 

“—yeah, stand-in, he was convincin’. And I figure, whether he is or he isn’t, that’s a lead to the real thing. That’s all the captain wanted, leads and info on what was happenin’ with the Max and Dragons.” 

Tristan seemed maybe half-convinced. He leaned back in his seat and craned his neck to get the waitress back over. He ordered them breakfast platters. The grill quickly started sizzling. 

“So are you gonna take the recording to the captain?” Tristan asked. 

“I gotta.” 

“Even with the all that...you hitting on him stuff in there?” 

Before Tristan finished the sentence, Joey bit the inside of his cheek. Him liking guys was more of a between Tristan and him sort of thing. His sister knew; his mother pretended that she didn’t know. The captain was a different beast all together. 

Joey shrugged. “It was an act. I just wanted to get outta there alive, an’ I figured I might as well ham it up,” he said flippantly. He laughed right after. “I mean, I was drunk. Am drunk. Whatever. I figure I can do...somethin’ with that.” 

“Like what? Like going under?” 

Joey shrugged. 

“Why don’t ya go home, sleep on it?” Tristan said. “We’ll report to the captain in the morning.” 

Their food came out quickly. Tristan inhaled, probably not tasting the food before it hit his stomach. Joey poked the eggs until the yoke was all the way out and soaking into the toast. He could have gone undercover; he’d done plenty in plainsclothes here and there, trying to get information or leads, but nothing of this caliber. This wouldn’t just be undercover, it’d be a complete infiltration. Going after someone like Kaiba, or the Dragons, or the Max, or whatever it was that his higher-ups were sniffing after, wasn’t some quick-in, quick-out deal. It was serious, and he’d have to be serious about it. 

He shoved a piece of toast into his mouth near-whole, chewing and mulling. 

Yeah, buddy, this would be serious. 

—

Captain Isis Ishtar was a serious woman. Not to be confused with mean, Joey thought, just serious. Stern. The kind of person that needed to be the captain of the Organised Crimes Division and its rambunctious squad. No matter what case or crime walked through their door, no matter how heavy, she didn’t flinch. At least, she didn’t flinch in front of her men. 

Impenetrable Isis Ishtar. 

That’s what the men called her. Some because of her rock-solid demeanour; others because they there wasn’t a man on the face of the planet that would want to sleep with her. 

Joey tried shrugging that reason off. That was just guys goofing off, making shit up, but they were the same kind of guys that would turn into eighth graders afraid of cooties when she gave someone even an ounce of affection. The jokes and jabs would last all day. In the locker room, the guys would make bets on whether or not this was the guy that would take the ‘impenetrable’ moniker away from her. Joey sometimes regretted that he’d roped them in a time or two, just because the pot got pretty big. He had a feeling the captain knew. She was the other-worldly kind of person that knew a lot of things she had no reason knowing. Either that, or she was really good at guessing, but she had told the men on more than one occasion: “Sex is not up for discussion or debate. Whether you’re having it, who it’s with, or why. I don’t want to know or care about how you chose to effect your future.” 

Joey liked that. 

It did make the ending of the audio recording uncomfortable to sit through. He didn’t know how far that philosophy stretched with her. Her expression was almost bored. 

When it was over, she folded her hands overtop of his phone and pursed her lips. “This isn’t what I was expecting when Taylor said you two had ‘the biggest thing ever’.” 

“What were you thinkin’?” Joey asked. 

“That perhaps you’d found something more concrete on the dealings between the Max and the Dragons.” She looked back to his phone and sighed. “I suppose it wouldn’t have been that easy. Walk me through the things I wouldn’t be able to pick up from this audio.” 

And Joey told her everything he remembered, all while doing everything to avoid her owl-like gaze. He was convinced she didn’t blink while listening, and instead he got awfully familiar with the dated wood panelling in her office. 

Isis let the information breath. “How many men did you see?” she asked after a moment. 

“Six, maybe seven. There might’ve been one by the door.” 

“Was there an older gentleman, perhaps thirty or forty, wearing sunglasses or a suit?” As she asked, she ruffled through the papers on her desk, pulling a few files out. “One of our confidential informants just gifted us a photograph of a man we believe to be Kaiba’s right hand. A gentleman by the name of Roland Ackerman, 39.” 

Joey squeezed his eyes closed and tried to remember. Everything came back fuzzy, blurry. Everything except Kaiba’s eyes. 

He shook his head. “Not sure. There were a lot of them, they kept moving an’ didn’t seem too happy for me to have crashed their game night.” 

“I see. Well, I’m going to put this on the board outside.” She moved the printout across the table. It was a still from security footage, outside of a shop it looked like. An older man, medium build, in a suit and suit-jacket, was stepping out of the shop with a bag in his hand. Beneath was a photocopied ID of Ackerman. He was plain, save for the pencil-like moustache. “The address is fake, but if we can find Mr. Ackerman, we could likely get whereabouts on Kaiba or Pegasus.” 

“He got somethin’ to do with the deal?” Joey asked. 

“I couldn’t be sure.” 

Joey grabbed the printout and looked at it, going so far as to put the paper so close to his face that he could make out the pixels and the ink strips from the printer. Looking on the computer was always better, and he’d never forsake his computer when it came to evidence, but sometimes he liked to get up close and personal. That, and he immediately recognised the place. 

“See somethin?” Tristan asked, popping out from the corner. 

“I think I know this place. This,” he passed the paper to Tristan, “this is Turtle Game, over by the park?” 

“Correct. You seem awfully familiar with the place. You must frequent it often,” Isis replied. It almost sounded like she giggled between the words. “It looks like something’s on your mind,” she speculated. 

“Sure. It kinda makes sense. Kaiba was playing poker, right? Or whatever the game was he had me play. He prolly gets his rocks off from playing games, so that means Ackerman...” Joey rolled his hand, not sure where that sentence was going. 

He shot a look at Tristan. 

Tristan rolled his eyes. “He’s an errand guy,” he said, finishing Joey’s thought. “He does everything in Kaiba’s place, so that’s why we don’t have any pictures of the man himself. We can’t even be sure that the guy on the recording is him.”

“It’s totally him, I know it was,” Joey insisted. 

Tristan clicked his tongue, his eyes never leaving the picture. “You know, this shop is deep in Max territory. Super deep. There’s no reason for a Dragon’s guy to be there if he doesn’t have to be.” 

So what was he doing there? Joey and Tristan exchanged glances, asking each other telepathically. It could have been as simple as picking up a board game for Kaiba. The Dragons were often unnoticeable in public. Avoiding certain locations could have made them easier to pick out when they suddenly showed up. But the game shop was precarious. Two game related things in two days? That didn’t seem right. 

“What if it’s...a drop-off spot?” Joey said slowly. “Like they send a guy like Ackerman in to pick up whatever the Max want the Dragons to have, and vice versa. If they’re actually hashin’ out some kind of territory deal like we’re thinkin’, this could be where they’re leavin’ messages or...or anythin’. Money. Drugs. Weapons. Anything.” 

“Yes,” Isis said hesitantly. “Which is why I need you to go talk to the owner. See what he knows about Mr. Ackerman.” 

“On it,” Joey said, standing. 

Isis held out her hand and motioned for Joey to sit. “I need a few words with you Wheeler. Go on by yourself, Taylor. And close the door behind you,” she said. 

Joey held his breath until the door was completely closed, and then slid deep in his seat. It garnered a disapproving glance, but there were bigger things on the captain’s mind. So much so that she had clasped her hands together and put them under her chin. 

“Are you alright?” Isis asked. 

“Fine. Yeah.” 

“You said they put a gun to your head.” 

“I’m fine, seriously. I expected it in when I signed up for Organised Crime,” said Joey, exasperated. He picked at his nails, trying not to think about what had happened. “That sorta thing comes with the territory. I was lucky to get out, I know that. An’ if you’re gonna lecture me about goin’ in there all gung-ho, I promise I won’t do it again. I just had a hunch an’ well, you know how my hunches go, I—“ 

Isis cleared her throat. “Stop. I’m proud you went ahead, as foolish as it was. I don’t want you to go in so blindly next time, but I suspect that won’t be the case with what I’m about to ask of you.” 

Ah. Yep. Here it was. The undercover job, though Joey and expected to bring it up to her, not the other way around. 

He nodded. “Shoot.” 

“Considering the quasi-alias you gave Mr. Kaiba, and the considerable impression you left on him, I don’t think you’ll be able to get out of this without him setting his sights on you, in whatever way he so chooses,” she said.

He swallowed heavy. Whatever way. Like another gun at his head while he was having coffee at Duke’s, or a 12 gauge in his gut right when he got into his apartment after a long night.

“I can’t believe someone like me made an impression. I was just guessin’ that he was...well, that he liked...you know, guys,” he said sheepishly. 

“And your guess was correct, given what little we know of Mr. Kaiba. He enjoys his privacy, but you and Taylor have worked out that there aren’t any mistresses in his life to speak of. A man has his needs, and you seem to know your way around this sort of thing, so I trust your judgement here.” 

The hairs on the back of Joey’s neck stood up. “Are ya wantin’ me to become, like, a bedmate with him...or...?” The words stuck in his mouth like glue. “Do you want me to go under, whatever way I can?” 

“Yes. Though whatever you chose to do, or how far you go, would be at your discretion.” 

Joey swallowed. “I was pretty upfront with Kaiba.” 

“I understand.” 

“I don’t...” he sighed. 

Sanctioned undercover sex, hoping for pillow talk. In other words: a honeypot. He could read between the lines, even if Isis wasn’t telling him exactly that. She didn’t need to. He wasn’t sure how kosher that was, but then again, neither was drinking on the job, among the myriad of other things he’d done here and there in order to get information or make a perp. Organised Crimes played by different rules. It was like running through a maze and hoping you didn’t hit dead ends. 

“I have no idea what I’d be doin’,” he said as weak protest. He wanted to. He didn’t want to. He wanted to. He didn’t want to. And Kaiba’s eyes swirled in his head, almost beckoning him. 

“Well, we’d provide you the identity of Joseph Wheelman. An apartment, a different car, if need be. Things of that nature. You’d fill in the rest, contact us on a schedule and provide whatever information you find, set up wiretaps if necessary. But you’d be committed to this, completely, until there’s enough information to break up whatever this is and bring the right people to justice.” 

He’d watched the movies. Things like Donnie Brasco, where the line between his former self and his current self blurred lines. His family would be walking on eggshells; he’d have to make sure they tell the wrong people things, if they were ever in the picture at all. He’d have to avoid them. 

“How long you think it’ll take?” Joey asked. 

“I can’t be sure. Considering their haste, perhaps a few months at most.” 

Joey clenched his jaw. Exhaled. “Alright. Okay. Yeah, let’s do this,” he said, because he hadn’t stayed up all night rehearsing his pitch to the captain about going undercover and not go through with it. 

—

Tristan met him for a late lunch at a burger joint they’d frequented since middle school. A place called Burger World that was smack dab in the middle of town, conveniently a short walk away from the high school. He couldn’t count how many times he and Tristan played hooky, leaving at lunchtime and spending the rest of the day walking up and down the main strip, window shopping, talking to the lady that owned the Spanish convenience store on the corner. 

Right when they sat down, Tristan admitted he didn’t get much from the shopkeep, and older man named Solomon Mutou. 

“Didn’t we go to school with a kid with that name?” Joey asked. 

Tristan shrugged. “Prolly.” 

“We went to high school with a lotta kids ‘round here.” 

“Yeah, and now we get to arrest their punk asses.” 

“Hey, we coulda been those punk asses,” Joey said, flicking a French fry at his friend. “Apparently we skipped just the right amount of class compared to them.” 

“Hey, Ms. Mellonger’s history class was a snore. There’s nothin’ in that class that would’ve helped me now.” Tristan was almost done with his first burger, and Joey knew if he did just enough talking, he would be through the second in a heartbeat. That was, if he could fess up about his new assignment. 

Joey rolled his shoulders when he should have chuckled, told old stories about how Ms. Mellonger’s head would block everything she was writing on the chalk board, and that she was absolutely terrible at pronouncing any foreign names. Funny enough, he remembered the name ‘Mutou’ being butchered. 

“Weird how most of these kids don’t make it out. I always expected us to scatter like cockroaches. How’d we all end up stayin’ in this big city?” Joey asked. “Didn’t half our class say they were going to move outta the country, be big shots in Europe an’ shit?” 

“I remember you said you were going to backpack in South America.” 

“Had to. Everyone else was talkin’ about France and Italy.” 

“I wanted pictures from wherever those llamas were,” Tristan recalled fondly. The first burger had disappeared. 

Joey had hardly touched his food. He needed to, he was dead tired and this would be the fuel to keep him going. Not even the soda was appetising. His stomach was bubbling, probably from being awake for more than 24 hours, but it was mostly his building anticipation.

“Llamas. Yeah.” Joey cleared his throat. Sipped on his soda. “So...I’m gonna be leavin’ ya alone for a few weeks, buddy.” 

“That what the captain wanted?” 

“Yep. Wants me to go under.” 

“You called that,” Tristan said, semi-impressed. “That bitch. This bites.” 

“They’ll give ya someone else. Maybe Richter.” 

“Richter never shuts up.” 

“Neither do I.” 

“But I like what you got to say!” Tristan took an angry bite from the second burger. His expression went from scowling at the bun to simmering down to a bit of sorrow. “A few weeks you said?” 

“Yeah.” 

“But it could be longer, couldn’t it?” 

“Yep.” 

“You’re gonna be in town though, right?” 

“Yeah, but contact’s gonna be limited. You know how it goes. I’ll pop in, report, call if I need somethin’. But if ya see me, you don’t know me.” 

Tristan frowned and set down his burger. “That’s gonna suck balls, man.” 

“Eh. I’ll come to ya when I seriously need somethin’," Joey said. He planted his elbow on the table and stuck his hand out. "Best buds, right?” 

Tristan looked at before slapping his palm into Joey’s, squeezing his hand. “Best bud’s got your back.” 

“Hell yeah.” 

“When’re you starting?” 

Joey rolled his shoulders until he stretched out the muscles and popped his back. Fuck, he needed some sleep. “Tonight. Headin’ back to the club an’ seein’ if they’re still hangin’ out. I have to bait the hook first, so wish me luck.” 

“Nah, you don’t need luck,” Tristan replied. “Just be careful.” 

“I will.” 

—

Sleep didn’t come. Forty-five minutes or an hour, tops. Otherwise, Joey rolled around in his bed and hugged the pillow and mattress thinking that he wouldn’t be sleeping in his apartment after tonight. 

He got up, stretched, and dressed in slacks and a red button-up. He even went out of his way to put mousse in his hair (not that it did much, it was always an untameable mess that went whatever direction is felt) and wash his face off to look more awake. 

On the way over, he debated if the drinks were on the department. That’d be nice. He could order something better than well liquor for once. 

Going to the club and getting inside was the easy part. Once there, it was a lot harder to decide what to do. He ordered a drink and took his usual seat next to the stairs, watching people enter and exit. The lights were more dizzying than normal. Everything blended and blurred together so much that he had fled to the bathroom just in case he threw up. 

False alarm. 

But he found a little bit of solace on his knees, leaning over a toilet bowl. It was brighter and less crowded. Music slipped under the door, muffled, and he could enjoy the beat. He swayed where he was braced, and he almost entered a trance, stopping himself from falling asleep with his cheek on the seat. 

Sleeplessness and him didn’t get along well. He had to power through. There wasn’t any intel to gather face-first in a toilet bowl. 

He staggered to stand, exiting the stall. Outside, a man in a suit and sunglasses leaned against with his back to the sink. Weird. No one was in the bathroom when he’d gotten in there, and he hadn’t recalled the door opening. Looking back, he took note of the stalls, all open. No one using a urinal either. Really weird. Off-putting. 

“Waitin’ on someone?” Joey asked. 

The man didn’t acknowledge him, and the sunglasses were so dark, he couldn’t even see the outline of the man’s eyes. 

He exited the bathroom, not wanting to get involved in whatever was about to go in there. Probably some weird kink or fetish thing. It had been a pretty eye-opening experience to find out that people liked to do more than have shower sex in a bathroom. Public bathrooms, especially the kinds in bars? That seemed to be their shit. He didn’t want to know what the guy was in there for, and he almost prayed it was a drug deal. Still, he rubbed his cheek where it had touched the toilet seat. Gross. 

He went back to the bar and ordered a second round. And a second became a third. Fourth. His vision was hazy, and he ended up getting a water to stay awake. 

Plenty of Max guys. Most of them went upstairs, and he’d have to go back upstairs if he wanted to get anywhere near where Kaiba could have been. Any of these schmucks would be a good target, and he could have used his apparently moderately charming personality as Mister Joseph Robert Wheelman to coax them into something and then work his way up to Kaiba. 

No. 

Maybe, but no. It would take too long. He didn’t have time to climb the social-bed ladder to a mob boss. The Dragons didn’t operate that way, anyways. There wasn’t one straight path of hierarchy amongst them. While Kaiba was definitely the head honcho that they all reported to, as far as Organised Crimes could tell, he had at least two lieutenants, and each of those lieutenants had two or three captains, and then those captains had a myriad of members who may or may not have been operating in Domino City. There had been evidence to suggest they ran up and down the West Coast, or even operated internationally. It explained their eclectic membership. 

What was an organisation like that, then? Did it classify as a mafia, or did it operate more like a business? Kaiba was the CEO, and his fellow officers had all those other three-letter titles, ordering around their underlings to do their bidding. Finance, drugs, weapons, extortion. Those were all departments. 

He asked the bartender for a pen and pulled out a little notepad from his breast pocket. The entire business metaphor was scribbled down as clearly as he could remember it, because once he’d lost the thought, it’d be a jog to get back to it. 

He was so invested in imagining that a stoic man like Seto Kaiba was the owner of a massive business conglomerate, wearing his nice suits and ties, going to business meetings and having three-martini lunches, that he hadn’t noticed when he stopped writing and had laid his hand in his cheek imagining it.

In that imagining, Joey was walked into a large room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the colourful Domino harbour. Little sailboats bobbed by. Birds flew by en masse. 

At the head of the infinitely long conference table, Kaiba sat. He seemed like he was a mile away, but Joey saw him clearly. His sharp jaw, his imperious eyes. He curled his pointer finger, beckoning Joey. The blond obeyed, and walked forward, almost jogging along the chairs when he realised he was never getting any closer to Kaiba. He would get there, he would get to the end, he would—

“Hey!” 

A solid smack of a hand on the bar woke Joey. His eyes snapped open. “What? Wha—I didn’t do it.” Somewhere along the way, he head had slipped off his hand and onto his notepad, using it as a pillow. He had drool marks to prove it. 

“No sleeping at the bar, pal.” 

Joey rubbed his eyes. “I was jus’ restin’ my eyes....” he said, and the bartender snorted, leaving him to collect himself. His body had gone numb in the short time he’d been asleep, but once he collected himself, he realised that a heavy coat was now rested on his shoulders like a blanket. “Hey! Hey, buddy!” he called to the bartender. 

“What?” 

“How long have I been wearing this coat?” 

“How should I know? I didn’t dress you.” 

Joey slipped it off and laid it in his lap, asking: “Did someone put it on me?”

“There’s a million people in here, pal. How the fuck should I know?” the bartender spat before walking off. 

What a saint. Joey made a note to never ask that guy to watch his drink if he went to the bathroom. He probably threw them out and told the customers they’d finished them before they left, but he’d be happy to get them another one. 

Fuck the bartender. He went back to the coat, running the thick fabric over his fingers. Wool, good and soft. The inside was lined with blue silk. The tag had been cut off cleanly. He dug into the inside hip pockets first, then the outside, and then turned the coat inside out until he found the inner breast pocket. Inside, he found a blank business card with light embossing on. He couldn’t make out the shape, but forensics could. He turned it over. On the backside was a simple, handwritten note: 

_Hurry up_

Joey’s body tingled. He held the card with both hands to make sure he didn’t drop it. Hurry up? Hurry up where, upstairs? Outside? He glanced around the room expecting for Kaiba to be standing in some corner, watching him and laughing. That was, if this was even Kaiba. It could have been some random, crazy denizen of Domino playing a prank on him. It could have been one of the Max deciding he was a target for some con. 

Panicked, he checked his pockets. Wallet, keys, phone. All there. His gun was still strapped against his ankle, too. Okay. Maybe not some punk trying to make him an easy target. 

He paid the tab and slipped off the stool. Outside was easier to get to than upstairs, he decided. And he could always come back inside if he was wrong. Hell, he could have misinterpreted this entirely. Kaiba could have made him as police and was just toying with him, challenging him to figure this out as fast as possible. Joey could get behind that; he’d always wanted some kind of criminal who left him cryptic clues, like the Riddler. 

Cold air woke him up when he got outside. People paraded through the sidewalk, hooping and hollering while bar crawling. There wasn’t a parking place to be found on the street. The Saturday night was hopping, so much so that there was a line to get into the club that hadn’t been there when he first arrived. It was 1 AM. The night had just begun. Finding Kaiba in this Where’s Waldo of nightlife was going to be damn near impossible, but he walked up to the intersection, standing at the back of crowd waiting for the light to change. He pivoted when it finally did, going against the grain of bodies, planning on going to the next block. 

“Hurry up? Hurry up what?” he said aloud, getting on his tip-toes to look over the parked cars for anything that looked out of place. 

By the time he made it to the opposite intersection, he’d shrugged on the coat. It was damn cold, and he wasn’t about to let a good coat go to waste. 

Beleaguered of searching the chaotic streets for a small sign of change, Joey rubbed his temples and cursed his stupid gut for leading him into the cold on a wild goose chase. He turned to head back and check upstairs, because why wouldn’t Kaiba have been upstairs? He was yesterday. 

And then a horn honked. It wasn’t loud. A gaggle of screaming girls almost drowned it out. He looked over his shoulder just in time to see a sleek town-car pull up at the intersection and pop its door open. No one poured out, like bridesmaids and frat boys tended to. 

His breath hitched.

This was probably it. The car was nondescript but elegant, the kind of thing that could float around this part of town unnoticed. And when it sat through a light and other cars blasted their horns at it, Joey was convinced that it was for him. So he hesitantly went to it and bent down to look inside. 

“Took you long enough. You walk around like a lost dog,” an elegant, gravelled voice said. “Or were you looking for the bathroom again?” 

Kaiba was backlit by the traffic light, turning red and casting menacing shadows along his face. He looked into Joey’s soul for half a moment before cackling to himself. 

Joey joined in. This was almost fun, he told himself. They were laughing with each other over what was probably going to be an inside joke. Kaiba wasn’t the Dragon’s boogeyman, he was svelte businessman in a nice suit. When they both began to taper off, he asked: “Do ya...do ya want me to get in?” 

“Unless you feel like holding up traffic for another light cycle,” said Kaiba flatly. 

“...huh?” 

“Get the fuck in.” 

Right. Not a businessman. He was the boss of bosses, and Joey had just clocked in for one hell of a shift. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m going to try and get a schedule going. I suspect bi weekly, on Tuesdays. I have a good system working out now, so anticipate the next chapter. Within the next two weeks, but possibly next week. 
> 
> Anyways, tell me what you think!


	3. Set Up at the Somerset Maugham Suite

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moving onwards!

A burly man sat beside Joey. Meat in a suit? Dressed to kill? The man was cut out of sheet rock. Joey had no intention of crossing him, but he was surprised when, instead of knocking him out or covering his head with a bag, Meat offered a crystalline tumbler of some amber liquid. 

“Uh...thanks.” 

He grunted. 

Any other time, Joey would have suggested that Meat was a real charmer. Not now. Oh hell no. And he wasn’t even sure if he should have sipped the proffered drink, but he sipped Anyways, because why not? 

Meat gripped his wrist. “Not before the boss.” 

“Oh...uh, I didn’t—,” 

It was then that he noticed a glass held delicately between Kaiba’s hands. All they were missing was a high-top table and a jukebox playing Cyndi Lauper and this was a real Saturday night for him. Kind of. He preferred gin and tonic not...bourbon, but the details were a little irrelevant at this point. 

“The fanboy doesn’t know all the etiquette?” Kaiba asked, and he put the glass the his lips. “He’s fine, Surawatari.” 

Another grunt. 

Joey took his arm back greedily and sipped, because not drinking was probably against etiquette, too. 

And his eyes started watering. “Damn....” he muttered smacking his lips. “Strong shit. You drink this straight?” 

“Sometimes.” 

“Fuck, man.” But he kept drinking, throwing it all the way back and handing the tumbler off to Sura...Sura...Suta-Meat. Ha. Perfect. Something worth remembering, because he couldn’t pull out his notepad right this second, and he was going to need to write everything down as soon as he could, for posterity, as the captain would say. 

“I expected better of you, Wheelman.” 

“Huh?” 

“The little details. Since you said you were such a fan.” 

“Oh.” Joey’s cheeks warmed. He blamed the bourbon. “Well, y’know...it ain’t like I investigated all that much.” 

“Mm.” 

“Jus’ like, talked to some o’ the guys in the Domino Club an’ all that. I see stuff around the city and get a little nosy,” he explained. “Like in the the corner stores? I see people playing that numbers game, and I tell myself ‘that’s prolly somethin’ important’, but like, I don’t ask, I just listen. I figure its a gamblin’ thing?” 

“Have you ever played?” Kaiba asked. 

“Nah.” 

“You should.” 

“Oh no. Naaah. Not that...not tha’ kinda guy...” 

The bourbon hit him right in the brainstem and bubbled up to his eyes. Good shit, yeah buddy. He leaned against the window and stared up at the glittering lights. He tried reading the street signs but couldn’t. His vision was too blurry. Whatever. He closed his eyes and took in a steadying breathe. This was all going to be okay. He knew this city like the back of his hand, there was no way he couldn’t tell where he was. They could have blindfolded him and taken him anywhere he would know. 

—

When Joey opened his eyes again, however, he wasn’t in the car. His face wasn’t planted against chilled glass, and he wasn’t stiffly shoved beside a boulder masquerading as a man. 

What was Meat’s name again? 

Morning light stung his eyes and he rolled over. His mouth was dry. His head pounded, and he curled into the fetal position long enough to notice he was laying down. In a bed. A soft bed, with silk sheets about twelve fluffy pillows at the head. 

He flung up and immediately regretted it, hanging his head in his hands. His stomach rolled. He pressed the butts of his palms into his eyes to hide the light from them as he gently laid back against the headboard. 

Morning. 

Bed. 

Naked. 

_Naked?!_

His hands fell from his face and he looked down at his body as though it weren’t actually his. He scrutinised every divot of skin and patch of hair, making sure that it was his, and he didn’t fully come to terms with the fact that he was stark naked until the very end, when he shoved wads of sheets between his legs. 

Okay. Alright. Breathe in, breathe out. There was a perfectly reasonable and logical explanation for why he was naked in a...a...

...a hotel bed...?

It had to be a bed in a nice hotel room. It was too starched to be someone’s home, though they had tried really hard to emulate that ‘home-away-from-home’ feeling. The walls were pastel green and pink, and instead of a television across the bed, there was little living room set-up complete with a plum chaise lounge. The coat he had been draped in hung over it, but the rest of his clothes were missing. The gilded drawers and wardrobe were empty, and nothing had been swept under the bed or was left by the clam-shell bathtub built for two. 

Curiously, he set his hand in the bottom of the tub. Bone-dry. It was possible it had all been cleaned up, but the more he pattered around the garish room, the more he realised that the only thing that had been used was the bed. 

But who had undressed him? 

Whoever they were, they’d been gentle. There wasn’t a mark or a bruise on him. All of his organs were intact, though he spent a long time making sure there weren’t incisions where his kidneys should have been. That was an Old Wive’s Tale, he told himself. Mobsters didn’t actually sell kidneys on the black market, and the Dragons, insofar, seemed too civilised to do that sort of thing, but he was still naked in a hotel room. Someone had to bring him upstairs, strip him, and let him sleep off the liquor. The possibility of pictures or a video of him existed. They may not have personally violated him, but he was well beyond his initial plan of just kissing and fooling around. 

He hung his head and clenched his jaw until his teeth hurt. God, he hoped it had been Kaiba and not Meat. 

Shit, where was his notepad? He needed to write down Meat’s name.

Suta...

Saru...

Sutawa—

A shrill scream broke his concentration. He snapped up and saw dumbstruck brunette woman hanging in the doorway. “Mai! Mai! Hurry up and get in here—!” 

“No, ya got it all wrong, I’m not s’posed to be here—“ 

“Mai! He’s walking around naked!” The woman called. She wrung her hands. “Oh my God,....” 

“Relax,” a sultry voice replied. 

The woman made him acutely of just how cold the room was. Joey balled all of the blankets over his prick, standing proudly at attention. And then Mai entered, and she had him pulling the sheets up over his chest as felt the heat of his flush creep down to his toes. 

She was a voluptuous woman. Full-bodied and unafraid to show it off. Golden hair hung in sausage curls over her shoulders. Full, red lips and thick eyelashes batted at him in a way that was far less abashed than the brunette. In fact, she just seemed bored, as if this was routine and men regularly showed up naked in her hotel room. 

“About time you finally woke up,” said Mai. 

“Huh?” 

“I thought you were going to sleep all day.” 

Joey’s lips thinned. “Do I know you?” 

“No. But I know you, Joey Wheelman,” she said, smiling devilishly. She threw his wallet into his chest. “So get up. You have a job to do.” 

“A job?” 

“Need you to deliver something.” 

“Deliver?” 

Mai rolled her eyes. “Yes. Deliver. Hablo Inglés?” 

“Yeah. Yeah. I...I’m jus’ confused as hell.” 

“They usually are,” Mai commented.

His eyes narrowed, but he refrained from parroting back the last word. They? Was this a common occurrence, men showing up naked and alone in hotel room beds? Or was it just this bed in particular? 

Mai looked back and held out her hand. The brunette deposited a crinkled manila enveloped into her palm which was then thrust into Joey’s lap. He caught it before it slid to the floor. 

“What am I delivering?” Joey asked. 

“How should I know? You’re the courier, not me. Congrats by the way,” she said flippantly. “We were needing a new errand boy. Apparently the ones I picked weren’t good enough for the boss.” 

“Boss? Ya mean Kaiba.” 

“Who else?” 

“I dunno, the Pope?” Joey’s shoulders dropped. “I jus’ woke up, naked, in a weird place, an’ I didn’t do that so...”

“Téa’s got your clothes,” she said, jabbing her thumb at the brunette behind her. “They just went through the wash, so if you break out from the detergent, too bad. Can’t exactly ask a drunk man his medical history.” 

Téa left the room and came back with his neatly folded clothes. She set them by Joey, and he tossed the envelope aside in favour of the warm clothes. 

“So where exactly do I gotta deliver that?” he asked, pulling his shirt on. The lady’s eyes never left him, like a predator watching its prey. “Doesn’t look like it’s got instructions.” 

“He said you’d figure it out,” Mai replied. 

“That’s not really helpful.”

She put her hands in surrender. “I’m just the messenger, hun.” 

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he grumbled, shimmying his underwear on underneath the blanket. “You talk to him, though?” 

“On the phone.” 

“So he ain’t here?” said Joey. 

“Aww, you miss him?” Mai cooed, her bottom lip stuck out. “That’s so cute, you have a crush on him.” 

“What! No.” 

“Listen hun, I’m going to give you one piece of advice: nip that in the bud. Right here, right now. He’s not into you, and he doesn’t care about you. Consider yourself lucky that he’s given you any kind of job, okay? Apparently you impressed him enough for that,” she said, picking up the envelope and throwing it in his lap again. “Not that I can figure out why. Look at you,” she wiped her hand through the caked in mousse, “you don’t have life figured out in the slightest.” 

He batted her hand away. 

She waved him off and left the room. Téa lingered behind as he finished getting dressed. He spared her a few looks. She was quiet, but if she did the same things that Mai did, she probably knew something about the organisation. If he ever got the opportunity, he’d pester her with as many questions as she was willing to answer. 

“Did ya happen to have the rest of my things?” he asked when he finished. 

“No, but it’s probably in the safe,” Téa replied. 

In a blink, she returned with his phone, notepad and gun. He quickly scooped them up, biting his cheek. So they knew he had a piece, and they knew where he hid it. No surprises. His only luck was it wasn’t issued by the city. Nothing about him screamed ‘cop’, just some gang-fanboy-schmuck that hung out in bars hitting on guys way out of his league. 

Téa ushered him out the door. He took the coat off the chaise before he went, running to the elevator after her. 

It was there he found out where he was. The Palladium Hotel. Domino’s premiere hotel for anybody who was anybody. Foreign dignitaries, celebrities, the old money, and apparently, the Dragons. And from the looks of it, they were descending from the top floor.

Bright light overtook him. For several seconds he could see across the sprawling city-scape, from the Platinum Coast to the vast red clay desert and snow-capped mountains less than a hour outside of town. He’d seen it from above in a helicopter once, but they zipped overhead so fast that he went from the city-centre to Rintama in the blink of an eye. Here, it felt like the elevator slowed to give him the view of the glossy skyscrapers and massive web of roads that connected it all. It felt like it could fit in the palm of his hand. Domino was different in the daytime; it was slow and peaceful. Calm. The twinkling lights and neon signs had gone to sleep. The freeway was passable. From atop Palladium, Domino was a lofty dream. 

“You can breath, you know,” Téa said, breaking him from his trance. 

“I am.” 

She chuckled. “Now you are. You weren’t a second ago.” 

“I totally was.” 

“Yeah, okay,” she said dismissively. It must have been a requirement for whatever job she and Mai had. “You okay?” 

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure?” 

“Totally. Woke up naked in a strange hotel. My head’s killin’ me. I’m deliverin’ a package to nowhere. I’m doin’ great.” 

Her eyes half-lidded. She folded her hands at her waist and rocked until she popped out of her heels. She probably wasn’t paid to care, and she was trying not to, but she did. When they got to the lobby, she grabbed his arm and said: “There’s a store on the corner that’ll have some aspirin.” 

“Oh...uh, thanks.” 

She got five steps out of the elevator before stopping and turning to him. Her eyes were bright and blue, a different kind of blue from Kaiba’s. A kind blue, one that felt warm and welcoming. 

“What’s up?” Joey asked. 

“Nothing, just,” she wrung her hands and looked over her shoulder, “make sure you open the package.” 

In the time he looked down to the envelope and back up again, Téa was gone. Weird. He could gather that he wasn’t supposed to know that, but he probably would have come up with it eventually. Not soon, though. Opening a mobster’s mail seemed like a bad idea, in general. But there wasn’t any address or instructions written on it. 

Once he outside the hotel, he slinked out of the way of foot traffic and peeled open the package. A piece of copy paper was rubber banded around a rectangular block. He pulled it out, and nearly dropped it in panic. 

He looked up and down the street, but no one was looking at him. People in Domino minded their own business. His palms began to sweat and his blood ran cold

Twenty-thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills was strapped beneath the copy paper. Normally, he wouldn’t have known. A civilian definitely wouldn’t, but he recognised the gold lined money strap, like the kind you got from the bank. He’d taken plenty of them out trunks from drug deals, though usually the money wasn’t this well-kept. It was crisp, wrapped tight, and as he inspected the strap, marked from the biggest bank in the city. Great, a dead-end. 

The paper, on the other hand, had more to say. 

_Surety Bond Fee Application_   
_Domino City Police Department, 2nd Precinct_

_1 - Received From:_______________________

_2 - Sum of: 20,000_   
_[x] Cash [ ] Check [ ] Money Order_

_3 - Defendant: Mokuba Kaiba_

Joey absently began walking away from the hotel. Mokuba Kaiba. He didn’t have to guess that whoever this was was related to Seto Kaiba, but how or why was a head-scratcher. Whoever they were, they needed bailed out of jail, and judging by the cash and the entire presentation, he was meant to do it.

He swallowed. 

There was something else paperclipped to the form; another embossed card, like the one he had gotten in the coat pocket the night before, hung with hand-written instructions.

_Puppy,_   
_Take the money and leave_   
_Or_   
_Pay the bond by 3pm sharp. Punctuality counts._

Punctuality counts? 

What was this, high school? Or was this Kaiba jabbing at him for being late the other night? It wasn’t like they had a date unless...he knew. 

No. 

There was no way that Kaiba had made him just yet. This was one of those mundane tasks meant to scare him. Or test him. Kaiba had made it pretty clear that taking the money was an option. Joey even ducked into a quiet corner beside a flower cart and riffled the fresh bills beneath his thumb. Twenty-thousand G’s could buy him a lot, and some lesser conman might have taken it and left town. Probably why they couldn’t find a good courier, if Mai was to be believed. But he wasn’t here for the money, and the thought vanished as soon as it appeared. He put the money back in the envelope and wondered what the threat in this was. 

Posting bail? That wasn’t a threat. Maybe to someone who hadn’t done it before, but he’d went and bailed out his old man several times before turning eighteen. It usually involved stopping at a pawn shop and hocking a bike or a TV or some tools first, but he always found the money somewhere. 

He eyed at the empty top line of the form again. No name was listed; Kaiba hadn’t been generous enough to fill that in for him, which meant that when he got to the precinct he’d be the one doing it. 

And he stopped dead in his tracks. 

Shit. He’d be posting bail for a gangster. He’d have to write down his alias and fake a signature, lie to them, and promise that this person would come back for their court date. That was all on him, and if Kaiba had figured out who he was, he would know how difficult this was. The money suddenly got all the more tempting. “Get out copper,” he could hear Kaiba saying. But then there was the possibility that Kaiba didn’t know, and if Joey didn’t post the bail, it was just as damning. 

He stopped in the middle of a crosswalk, letting bodies push around him. He clutched the envelope so tight, his fingers pierced through it. He was overthinking this. It was a courier job, a way to get his foot in the door. He had the opportunity to prove that he was loyal and wouldn’t backstab Kaiba, and that’s all there was to it. 

A car horn honked, and he ran to other side of the crosswalk. The December sun was unseasonably warm, and he wobbled as he walked down the street. Doing this was serious business. He knew it would be. Entering the folds of the mob wasn’t like handing over his résumé and asking for a job; he had to earn this, and if it meant lying to his peers and superiors, it was better to ask for forgiveness than permission. They’d understand. If it led to a bust, they’d understand. 

Resolved, he pulled out his phone to GPS directions to the 2nd precinct. 

And then he saw the time. 

1:57 PM

He bolted down the street and frantically pounded the address into his phone. It was in a place oft referred to as the Silicon Rift on the southwest side of town. There were no taxis in sight. Not that they ever went anywhere fast, and the afternoon traffic was already starting to pile up around the downtown area. On foot, it hour away

He broke into a full sprint. He’d made a 9-minute mile in academy, and as a beat-cop, he’d taken down several speedy perps. You bet your ass he could make it across town in that time. Kaiba just said he needed to be punctual, not smell good or have a chest full of air. 

On a pivot, he cut across four lanes of gridlock traffic, swinging around a pole. The further south he moved, the more congested it became. People. Carts. Cars. Street performers that completely blocked the way. He narrowly ducked out of the way of a dancing violinist. Next person stupid enough to run as blindly as he would would break that violin. They wouldn’t mean it, but they would. 

He made it maybe a quarter of the way before he slowed to jog. 

Up ahead, a loud and colourful protest barricaded most of the 27th block, affectionately know as Butcher’s Row. It sat right outside the financial district and served as a barrier between downtown and the south side. It was also the main thoroughfare out of Domino, and if you wanted to send a message—and royally fuck up traffic—this was the best place. 

They screamed and chanted. Danced. Colourful smoke plumed into the sky. Joey bobbed and weaved around the living maze until he stumbled on the other side. 

Breathless, he leaned against a wall. His lungs were bleeding and he was maybe a third of the way there. 

He checked his phone. 

2:18 PM.

Ignoring the growing stitch in his side, he swivelled into a thin alley. A chain-link fence was between him and the mess of bodies that now clogged the entrance. He ran at full force, jumping onto the edge of dumpster to give himself up a boost up the fence. He tumbled onto the other side, falling hard onto his ass. 

Shit. Who’s idea was it to run again? 

Oh yeah. Joseph fucking Wheelman’s. 

He kept running. Less than forty minutes and he still had to get across half of the city which, by all accounts, was having its busiest Sunday in months. Who in their right mind protested and shopped in December? Oh yeah, tourists. The upcoming holidays were upon the city, and people flew in for their massive Christmas Tree lighting and their renowned row of light-up houses that, for some, were like some holiday Mecca. And then they stayed, because Domino was massive and places like Silicon Rift were known for their holiday tech demonstrations, which meant that slithering into S.R. and the 2nd precinct was going to be harder than ever, especially on a Sunday. 

He swung into the backstreets of the veritable Little Asia, which had thin and narrow snaking paths. It smelled delicious back there, and any other day he would have stopped for bao buns at Auntie Lin’s stall. No time. Later. He’d reward himself for doing this right, he told himself. 

A look at his phone. 2:35 PM. 

Frantic, seeing that the time put him at the precinct seven minutes after three, Joey looked around for another solution. Not that there was much in a tiny path they called a street. Kids ran past him, and he clutched his phone and the envelope close, just in case. Maybe he could have the station fudge the time stamp. 

They wouldn’t go for it. Not from a schmo like him. 

He looked at his phone again. Another minute ticked by. 

And he saw the little bicycle icon in the GPS. It got him there a few minutes before three, more than any taxi or even his aching feet. It wasn’t ideal. The bike rental service didn’t do business in Little Asia, unfortunately, though there had been a station near the Palladium. As if the rich business people needed to ride a bike. And as he slithered further towards the exit of Little Asia, he saw his opportunity: a forest green bike with thin, worn-down tires. 

He cased the place. No one’s husband was sneaking a cigarette behind their shop. No auntie was watching the kids out the window. The kids were still at the far end of the street. 

“Sorry,” he muttered, and he casually took the bike like he owned it. He’d bring it back; it wasn’t stealing, he told himself, just borrowing. As if grand theft bicycle was the worst felony he was technically committing today. 

He pedalled madly down the slope towards the S.R., riding between the sidewalk and the street. Cars narrowly avoided clipping him, and as they did, he wondered if he’d get workman’s comp for getting hit while trying to post bond under a false name on a stolen bicycle. Would Kaiba pay him for services unrendered? Didn’t seem likely. And then there was the chance that, as he got hit, the money would go flying into the air and the people who saw him get hit would suddenly forget he existed, because then they’d have to explain where the money came from. It was a callous city; it got worse at night, and those sort of thoughts should have left him jaded and cynical, like half the police force. But he considered it part of living in a place as big as Domino. Everyone had a motive, a plan, or a dream. It wasn’t always positive, either. Some just wanted to strike it rich off others misery. Some liked to see what kind of chaos they could wrought and enjoy it. Some wanted to disappear into the throngs of crowds and be just another face. 

He turned sharply. The precinct was just ahead. 

He wondered where people like Kaiba and Pegasus fell. What were their motives, their dreams, their plans? He guessed that was why he wanted to be in Organised Crimes. Getting into the nitty-gritty to find those answers made the 5 to 9 infinitely more interesting, even if it was exhausting. And so far, he’d gleaned one thing from these gangs: their relative coolness was intense. They did everything with ease. Drug deals, sabotage, kidnapping, murder. It was another day in the office, like filing paperwork or having an afternoon meeting over lunch. 

The fact that they’d taken him—unconscious somehow, and he’d have to figure that out how later—stripped him naked, laid him up in a the fancy suite of a hotel, and then sent him on a delivery errand probably didn’t even strike them as abnormal. For him, it was a nightmare, and he would remember it for the rest of his life. For them, it was another day at the office. 

At 2:54, he arrived at the precinct. The bicycle was discarded at the stairs and he jogged in, heading to the receptionist. 

“Need to post bail for someone,” he said. He knocked his foot against the front of the desk. 

The woman didn’t look up at him. “Name?” 

“Kaiba. Mokuba Kai—,” 

“Spell it for me.” 

Joey bit his tongue. The clock over the reception desk taunted him. Five minutes to three. 

“M-O-K—,” 

“Last name first.” 

He wiped sweat off his forehead and swiped his hand down his cheeks. He was drenched. Every muscle ached. He kept looking around expecting to see one of his superiors walk out and casually greet him, get him caught up in conversation, and make him late. 

_Punctuality counts._

Fuck it. He was Joseph Wheelman, not Detective Wheeler. He might as well fall right into whatever personality got this done on time. 

He slapped the envelope down on her desk. “Paper’s ready, money’s there. So hurry up and put it in already, lady. Jus’ hit enter on the file an’ scan it all in later. Here,” he grabbed a pen and scribbled his name in and signed below, “all done. C’mon let’s go. Got places to be. You’re keepin’ Kaiba waiting.” 

The woman rolled her eyes. “I can’t teleport him up here, y’know.” 

“Yeah, yeah.” 

“The bursar has to sign off on it.” 

“Fuck, I don’t care. Just start typin’.” 

And he really don’t know if it got in under the wire or not. She went through proper procedure, called everyone she needed, scanned in the files. He wondered if Kaiba would even know if it was 3 o’ clock as opposed to a minute or two after. 

Joey paced, waiting. He shot dirty looks at the people who looked at him. The eyes weren’t going to go away. The whole precinct had practically heard him yell Kaiba’s name like it was threat. This was all an act, and as soon as he walked out of here, it would go away. 

He took a long breath, closed his eyes, and sat down. 

A half-hour or so later, a uniformed officer walked out with what Joey could only describe was a high schooler. Sixteen, maybe seventeen tops. He hadn’t bothered looking at what charges Mokuba had incurred, it had been a hell of a day, but this gangly kid with unkempt, shoulder-length black hair and baggy clothes couldn’t have racked up 200,000 dollars* worth of anything that required bail. 

Joey stood, and Mokuba walked past him out the door. 

Wordlessly, he followed the kid outside. He lingered at the curb, looking up and down the street and finally at Joey when they were shoulder to shoulder. “Why are you standing so close?” Mokuba asked. 

“I’m jus’ standing here.” 

“You should be getting the car.” 

“Oh, uh...’bout that.” Joey looked back where he had dropped the bike, finding that someone had been nice enough to set it upright. “There ain’t a car. I was told to come an’ get ya, so I did.” 

Mokuba looked to the sky, in the way that all teenagers looked at the sky when even the simplest things aggravated them. “Oh great...another one of Seto’s air-headed boy-toys,” he said, exasperated. He took a long step to the right, making space between them and began digging in the plastic bag of affects the officers gave him as he left. He fished out his phone and made a quick call. 

All the while, Joey failed to fully process what he’d just been called. Seto’s boy-toy? 

“Look, kid, I’m not —,” 

“Two things,” Mokuba interrupted. “One: I’m not a kid, and two: don’t talk to me. Get it?” 

“Yeah, sure.” 

“Good.” 

They waited in silence. There wasn’t any reason for Joey to make sure Mokuba was seen off, but he felt compelled. For no other reason than Mokuba couldn’t have been any older than his littler sister. He wouldn’t leave her waiting for a car, either, and she was a full-grown college student. 

A sleek black car, not unlike the one from the night before, pulled up to the curb. Mokuba hopped in, and as it drove away, Joey shouted: “You’re welcome!” 

Mokuba stuck his hand out the window and flipped him off as the car drove off. 

Damn. Whatever was going on here, it was deep shit. Not that he expected a kid who’d just gotten sprung from jail to be happy-go-lucky, but damn. He didn’t have the energy to unpack everything that had happened in the last twelve hours. Or even in the last twelve minutes. 

Who was this kid? Kaiba was about Joey’s age. Nowhere near old enough be having kids Mokuba’s age. And given that Kaiba was in a hurry to bail him out of a jail and the snide comments Mokuba made, they were close. Either cousins or brothers. Joey’s money was on brothers, and if that was the case, there was a whole hell of a lot more about Kaiba that Organised Crimes knew nothing about. 

Then there were the details about him being a boy-toy.

His headache came back with full-force, pounding behind his eyes. Too much. Today had been too much. He needed a full night of sober sleep in his own bed to get him back to normal. He could tackle his notes and compiling all this evidence then. The note had handwriting samples, he had the cards to hand over, and...

Dammit. 

The car was long gone, but he’d had the perfect opportunity to get the license plate and had been so wrapped up the rest of the shitstorm he hadn’t even bothered. Tristan would have nagged him so hard for forgetting something so simple; this entire delivery and been a gold mine. Why did he feel so empty handed? 

His phone trilled, and he expected it to be Tristan telepathically knowing he’d mucked something up. 

Instead, it was an unknown number. His gut told him to answer it, and he hesitantly answered, “Yeah?” 

“Looks like you managed to complete the delivery. Good.” Mai. 

He twisted around, expecting to see her hiding around the corner. “How’d you get my number?” 

“That’s what you’re worried about? Hun, please, in this day and age that should be the least of your worries,” she said, chortling. “What’s important right now is that you get back to Palladium. We need to finish up the job, so get your butt back here ASAP.” 

His blood chilled. “Whaddya mean by ‘finish up’? The job’s done. Kid’s out and already halfway across town by now.” 

Mai snorted. “Fine. Don’t get paid, it’s no skin off my nose.” 

“P-paid?” 

“Uh...yeah? What, did you think you were going to skimped? Trust me, good couriers are hard to find, and apparently you can figure out the boss’s instructions, so I can’t really complain,” Mai said, his voice mellowing. It was a sweet voice, easy-going. “Well, I can if you don’t hurry up. I don’t have all day to wait on you. I’m a busy woman.” 

“Okay. Okay.” 

Somewhere between the first and second ‘okay’, she hung up. He grabbed the nearest cab, knowing he would have time to decompress on the long ride back to the Palladium. He scribbled down a few notes about Suta-Meat and his connection to Kaiba as some kind of bodyguard. Then there was Mai and Téa, who were connected to the Palladium, which was somehow connected to Kaiba, especially since Mai called him ‘Boss’. It could have been a base of operations. No one thought twice about the sort of people that holed up in hotels, least of the all the people in swanky hotels. Concierge was paid for their discretion. 

Then there was Mokuba. 

Joey noted everything that had happened between him and Mokuba, as well as the kid’s description, and included questions like ‘what was his charge?’ and ‘Brothers?’ to be answered later. 

The two business cards Kaiba had left him were slid into his notepad for him to turn over later. He’d need more solid things to hand over. Video, photos, recordings. 

They pulled up to the Palladium, and he paid his last few dollars to the cabbie before heading in. 

Mai was nowhere in the lobby, and he went to the elevator, jumping in and jamming the button to for the top floor. The doors didn’t close. The touch screen prompted him for a four-digit passcode. 

Right, of course. Ritzy place wouldn’t just let people waltz up...and he really didn’t have a reservation, either. Despite that, he went to the woman at the concierge and brought up charismatic Joey Wheelman to help him out. 

“Hey, uh, so...I forgot the passcode to get upstairs,” he said, leaning against the marble desk. 

“What room were you in?” asked the attendant. 

“I didn’t really book it. See, there was this girl, and she lead me up there. It was a wild time, I was really paying attention the whole way, if ya know what I mean.” And if he could, he would have burned his tongue. This sort of talk he reserved for those Max douches, not this woman. 

“Ah. Just a moment,” she said, curt. She motioned to the other end of the desk, and a man in a three-piece suit appeared. “This man was inquiring about the Somerset Suite.” 

The man in the suit smiled with all his teeth and cupped his hands together. Something about that overly kind posturing made Joey’s stomach do a flip. “I’m sorry, but that room has been booked for the night. If we can help you find someone a little more your...price-range, we’d be happy to help.” 

Someone? 

“Nah. Nah, I’m not interested in...that,” Joey said. “I just need to talk to Mai.” 

“Ms. Valentine is busy at the moment.” 

“She tol’ me to come an’ talk to her.” 

The man’s smile fell immediately. “Oh, I’m sure she did.” 

“Yeah, she did,” Joey replied hotly. Façade broken; that, or he was just become the same hothead from the precinct. Why not? This day had already gone to hell. “So if ya don’t mind, I’d like to talk to her. She owes me some damn money.” 

The man held up his finger and picked up the phone. 

Immediately, Joey backed away. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that this suit was calling Mai. An arm hooked into his as he backed away. Security had probably watched the whole altercation and he hadn’t noticed, too caught up in his play-acting. He wretched around, planning on running out the door, but stopped dead in his tracks. 

Téa smiled back at him. “Look at you, causing a scene,” she said, and she waved to the man in the suit. He hung up the phone. “All you had to do was call, you know.” 

“Mai told me to meet her here, so that’s what I was tryin’ to do. Those guys back there weren’t making it easy.” 

“If it was that easy to talk with the Madam, everyone would do it.” 

They entered the café at the far side of the hotel, and a hostess saw them to a table in the far corner. It was the closest to private they would get. The tables were pressed close together, and people sat shoulder to shoulder having quiet conversation over wine and finger food. 

He sat, a million questions bubbling at the base of his brain. 

Before he asked then, he pulled out his phone and clicked a few buttons, pretending to look at it, before turning on the recorder and setting it face down. “So Mai’s a madam, huh?” 

“She prefers to call herself an independent contractor.” 

“Prolly looks better on a job application.” 

She shrugged. “I guess. Not like we’re ever going to go job hopping.”

“I wouldn’t blame you. Workin’ out of the...the Somerset Suite? That’s pretty crazy. I hears some rumblings about that place here an’ there,” he said, which was half-true. A few cases led had led them to suites of Palladium Tower, but they never got past the concierge desk. Now, he’d probably gotten farther than any Domino police officer. “Never thought I’d get the pleasure to be up there. Pretty nice place.” 

“It’s cute. We have the interior changed each season, and I get to decorate for spring,” Téa said. “If things go well, maybe you’ll get to see it then. All depends on how the boss decides to go with things from here.” 

“Right. Gotta get all this past Kaiba.” 

Téa looked to the left, and then to the right, before leaning across the table. “I wouldn’t say that too loud if I were you,” she said, and she winked. 

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. This isn’t what anyone would call a conventional job. Not for me at least.” 

“It is the world’s oldest profession, or so they say,” Joey replied cheekily.

Téa’s cheeks bloomed shades of pink. “Hey, you’ve got that one wrong, mister. I don’t do that.” 

“There’s nothin’ to be ashamed about. Job’s a job.” 

“And I don’t do it,” Téa said, crossing her arms over her chest tightly. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t be ashamed of it. There’s nothing wrong with a woman having sexual freedom and enjoying herself on top of it.” 

“Okay, alright, okay, I didn’t mean it that way,” he said, his hands up defensively. He needed to keep her talking, though. “If ya aren’t one of the girls, what do ya do that’s so unconventional?” 

She shrugged roughly. “This and that. Mostly whatever Mai needs me to do to help keep the peace. Sometimes that’s helping out with clients, but it’s mostly boring stuff like bookkeeping or whatever. Like I said, this and that.” 

“That must keep you busy. You like it?” 

“I like money,” Téa said. “Which, I mean, that’s what having a job is all about. Making money so you can do the stuff you really want to do.” 

The waiter came by and give them water in wine glasses before taking their order. He picked something off the top of the menu, some French thing he couldn’t pronounce. Anything to get food in his stomach. 

Greedily, he sucked down the water and then held the cold glass between his hands. He hadn’t cooled down from the day, but it helped him relax some. The waiter refilled it just as fast as he drank it. “So, what it is that ya really wanna do?” 

“Teach.” 

“Teach what?” 

“Promise you won’t laugh?” 

“I won’t,” he said, smiling. 

Téa looked down into her glass. “I want to teach dance. Open my own little studio somewhere around Butcher’s Row, that way I can have one of those old shops with the windows, and everyone could see the kids in their leotards getting ready for a recital or something.” 

It sounded idyllic, and the way that Téa looked down into her glass, Joey could see her watching those recitals in the ripples of the rippling water. She might have been dancing beneath the table, and he’d never know. 

Their food came out. He began to scarf it down. 

“Ya been doin’ dance a long time?” he asked between bites. 

“Since I was...6 or 7, yeah.” 

“Did ya ever like, go to college for it or anythin’?” 

She nibbled bites of her salad, and he saw her shoulders droop. She wasn’t sad, per se, but he knew he’d hit something right. Or wrong.

“Has anyone every told you that you ask a lot of questions?” Téa said, half-joking.

He rubbed his cheek with the fork handle. “Yeah, I’ve been told I’m nosy once or twice,” _and that’s why I made a job out of,_ he added internally. “I don’t think it’ll ever go away. Not when I get to meet a bunch a interestin’ folks. ‘Specially here.” 

“Hopefully you’ll stick around and get to meet a lot more people. But a word of advice: don’t ask too many questions on the job,” she said. And her face lit up. “Oh! I almost forgot. I’m supposed to give you your pay.” 

She pulled a rolled up wad of cash from her pocket and slid it across the table. A rubber band kept it together, though he clearly saw a hundred-dollar bill beneath another business card with something scribbled on it. Because of course there was; Kaiba really was like the Riddler, which was equal parts exhilarating and terrifying. 

_Congratulations,_   
_You know how to follow instructions_   
_Fisherman’s Wharf, 5:00pm._   
_Not a minute late, puppy_

For the nth time that day, Joey panicked. His adrenaline was going to stop reacting sooner or later, but it went in full-force as he looked at his phone. 

4:47pm. 

He left the restaurant without telling Téa good-bye. 

—

There was nothing Joey could have done to make it to the Platinum Coast any faster than he did. 

The taxi let him out in front of Fisherman’s Wharf, a run-of-the-mill seafood restaurant that sat half in the ocean. Waves crashed against the barnacle covered support beams. The cold ocean breeze cut him to the bone. He didn’t have to look hard to find Kaiba’s sleek black car in the parking lot.

With his head held high, he went into the restaurant. 

Suta-Meat waited in the foyer and escorted him to a private room in the back of restaurant, the kind usually reserved for birthday parties. There was a single table drenched in solemn candlelight. The place-setting was made for three, with Kaiba and Mokuba occupying two of the seats. They already had plates, half-eaten. 

“Oh, it’s him,” Mokuba sneered.

Kaiba held out his hand and turned towards Joey, crossing his legs. His blue eyes glowed in the light. Something severe overtook him, as if he expected Kaiba to reach into his pocket and shoot Joey dead before getting back to dinner. His head tilted, and with very little care, he said, “You’re late.” 

“It’s rush hour,” Joey replied. 

“You finished the job on time. By my calculations, you should have been able to make it here on time as well.” 

“Well, ya calculated wrong.” 

Mokuba snickered, and Kaiba shot him an annoyed look before turning back to Joey. “Come over here,” he ordered. 

Joey obeyed. He stood was a breath away from Kaiba trying to keep his knees from knocking together. 

“I don’t appreciate insubordination, nor do I appreciate tardiness.” 

“There was no way I coulda got here faster. I didn’t get the note ‘til it was nearly five. Blame your staff.” 

“I’m going to blame you, Wheelman,” Kaiba said coolly.

Joey clenched his fists. The casualness of the conversation alarmed him. The man was unreadable, and though his expression was severe, he still seemed to enjoy himself. That kind of mixture bordered on sociopathic, and Joey teetered between fear and excitement, too. 

Sucking in a breath, he double-down. “I’ve been through a hell of a lot today. I woke up naked and was told to go post this kid’s bail. So I did. On time! Bail don’t have a time limit, ya know, I coulda posted it whenever.” 

“And then we wouldn’t have made it to dinner, which you’re now ruining.” 

“Ruinin’ nothin’. Ya got to have this stupid dinner because I went and got him outta jail!” he said, daring to take a step closer. He was toe to toe with Seto Kaiba. “I stole a bike to do it.” 

"And you're still late." 

"I stole a fuckin’ bike! Didn't you hear me? I paid the bail." 

"And you're late.” 

"Not on the bail. That's all that mattered, ain't it?” 

“Everything matters, Wheelman. Everything is a chain of events, and when one of the links fails, then everything fails,” Kaiba said, with the grace of a zen philosopher. “So you’re late. You got the first note on time, you took it seriously, and you posted bail on time. Good for you, but then you decided to slack and now you’re late. Which makes you the weak link. I don’t need weak links.” 

He dug his nails into his palms to stop himself from decking Kaiba in the face. It was a pretty face. It wasn’t worth hitting; moreover, it wasn’t worth losing this invaluable opportunity so early. Kaiba was testing him, pushing his buttons. At least he’d been right, this was a test, not that being right meant anything. 

“I ain’t no weak link,” Joey said through grit teeth. 

“Oh, is that so?” Kaiba asked, leaning his cheek into his fist. “I’d like to see you try and prove that.” 

Without warning, without reason, and without hesitation, Joey lurched forward and grabbed Kaiba by the lapels. He smashed his lips against Kaiba’s haphazardly at first, before finding a little more purchase. He tasted like red wine and garlic, a good enough taste that Joey lingered and, on any other occasion would have enjoyed immensely, but he was more concerned with it meaning something. 

Might as well enjoy it, too. 

There was no going back now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *200,000 dollars would have been the amount of bail that Mokuba was given, total. Joey having only 20,000 to pay would be normal for a lot of cash bail places, since that’s all that needs to be put up. 
> 
> So this is filler-y, somewhat. Setting up this and that, but getting real deep real fast, also. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Tell me what you think!


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